София

Sofia's motto — "Grows but does not age" — is a boast the city can document. Thracian Serdica was Constantine the Great's favoured residence ("Serdica is my Rome," he is said to have sighed); its red-brick rotunda of St George, fourth century and still holding services, now stands serenely in a courtyard ringed by ministries, while excavated Roman streets run beneath the boulevards, roofed in glass. The church of St Sofia, sixth century, eventually lent the city its name; the gold-domed Alexander Nevsky Cathedral added the skyline's crown in the twentieth; and on Vitosha mountain's slope, the Boyana Church guards frescoes of 1259 — portraits so alive they anticipate the Renaissance by two generations, and a UNESCO treasure.

Between antiquity and the ring of socialist-era monuments lies the compact elegance of the post-Liberation capital: the yellow-brick pavements, the National Theatre's Viennese façade, the university, the mineral baths. And always, at the end of every street, Vitosha — a two-thousand-metre mountain as municipal garden.

Musical Sofia concentrates the nation: the Sofia Philharmonic in the Bulgaria Hall, the Sofia Opera and Ballet, the National Radio Symphony, the Sofia Soloists, the National Palace of Culture's festivals and the New Year's Music Festival among them. Add the conservatoire and the choirs, and the capital's evenings are as layered as its foundations.